We have not shared anything for a while in the midst of our summer business.
Below is a quick update from our life and we wanted to ask your opinion with regards to a certain situation.
We have been doing various tasks around the land. Zoya has been harvesting wild herbs as health teas for winter time and I have been continuing building the Wautillarium Earthship Hybrid for cold climate.
The 4 types of horse flies as well as day time mosquitos made me cover my body entirely in the +35 which stood for most of June and July.
The cement mixer, that we purchased, just arrived from Belarus. We will once again build together as it requires 2 people for construction of Super Adobe.
As you are aware for almost a year we have been working with orphanages so we can bring children without families to our home. This process turned out to be a lot more difficult that we could have even imagined in the worst case scenario.
Now the problem is neither with all the documents that we need, which we all have in order, nor it is in the sanitary condition of the home for children to comfortably live at.
Now that Zoya have visited the children and on the final stages of bringing them here, we have a a new curve ball. In many orphanages children are kept on sedative / ADHD as well as a neuroleptic cocktail of downers and uppers. We have recorded a few videos and shared our thoughts about mind altering chemicals
Even more scary for the children who have lived through the harshest emotional
traumas of loosing their parents after being beaten by them until hospitalisation…
Once these kids end up in a NEW family all of their old baggage starts to come up to the surface. Now what is needed is for the new foster parents to open "their hands & hearts" and catch the traumatised children in nets of love, care and support…. It is important to allow for their traumas and pain to erupt in a safe space and NOT shove neuroleptics and sedative pills to “patch" their pain and lock it inside.
A few weeks back we had an online meeting with between both of us with 9 orphanage staff members. At this meeting they stated “a must be met” condition: that the only way that we can take the kids under our care is to continue giving them the pills that they received at the orphanage. Of course both of us objected to the sedation of the children! After that the online meeting swiftly ended.
For now we do not know what to do?!?
The lawyers that are assisting us with advice told us that we should have just agreed to all the conditions of the system, and that we should not have spoken our truth with regards to how damaging it would be if the kids are to be kept on being poisoned by the sedative medication.
We see only one way forward: The option that we were considering and discussing until now is to become FOSTER parents whereby the government still pays us monthly. The down side is that the siblings still belong to the property of the system and they WILL DO up to 5 check up visits in our home per month!!!
We also are obliged to take the children to various specialist multiple times per week, and only the psychiatrist can lower / up the dose or change the chemical cocktail of pills that our kids are under.
We are deciding to fully adopt them. This way the children will no longer be the property of the government. They will be under our full responsibility, carry our surname etc. It's a lengthy process that we are willing to go through.
The foster parents in Russia pay 200 USD per child per month but this gives them the right to fully control the parents. We will also be obliged to send a break down of cash slips on how we have spent their 200 bucks and take them multiple times per week to closest town to visit psychiatrist, phycologist, “special” education facilities of mentally retarded. Basically our dream of home schooling on the farm through Rudolph Steiner (Waldorf) and Alexander Neill (Summer hill school - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9BgrGiIYc0 ) play methods WILL BE FORBIDDEN!!!
What would you do on our place? Please share youк opinion
At the current state we know one thing for sure: WE WILL NOT RETREAT AND CONTINUE TO PUSH THROUGH TO GET CHILDREN TO OUR HOME - TO GIVE THEM A BRIGHT FUTURE.
For now we are preparing the rooms for their arrival, creating the play spaces and slowly moving towards our goal.
Thank you for your continuous support. We are really feeling you
With love Alësha and Zoya
